Erika Kokhanov

Testimony of Erika (Kochnova) Katz, born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, 1937, regarding her experiences in Bratislava, Novaky, Zvolen, Banska Bystrica and in hiding Her parents' home; her father's work as an engineer, chemist and manager of a factory owned by the family; Imposition of limitations, including prohibition on buying in shops; termination of the nanny's work; Yellow Badge; wearing of a small Yellow Badge by her parents due to their being essential to the state; wearing a regular Yellow Badge from 1942; enforcement of the limitations; confiscation of their apartment except for one room; entrance of a family of strangers into their apartment; rollcalls in preparation for the deportation of the Jews; in hiding with her family in the attic of one of the [female] workers at the factory; deportation of the family to the Novaky camp; uprising by the Slovak partisans, 1944; breaking down the fences around the camp; organized escape to Zvolen by truck; mass escape to Banska Bystrica, August 1944; renting an apartment; draft of her father to forced labor, digging trenches in Kremnica; mass murder; throwing of the corpses into the trenches dug in October 1944; departure of her grandmother for Prievidza using forged documents; escape on the last train to Motycky; receiving assistance from Anna Chledna, a farmer from a nearby village; in hiding in the home of the [female] farmer [Anna Chledna]; receiving food; attendance at classes at a nearby monastery; knowledge of her Jewish origins by the priest at the monastery; end of the war, May 1945; Return home; change of the Jewish last name; aliya to Israel, 1949.